The swift growth in the number of nanosatellites and CubeSats in orbit around the Earth has noticeably amplified the danger of collisions with micrometeoroids and orbital micro-debris. While these particles are tiny, the high relative speeds at which they move can inflict serious damage to the structure, impair the sensors, or render the whole subsystem non-functional, especially in small satellites that have little redundancy. A majority of the current nanosatellite missions do not have specially designed real-time impact detection hardware on board and instead depend on post-mission inspection or indirect signs like telemetry anomalies for their detection. This article describes a system consisting of several sensors that is compact, uses less power, and is able to detect micro-debris impact on the satellites in real time, which was the main reason for its development. The entire system is made up of several sensing elements, such as piezoelectric sensors, MEMS accelerometers, acoustic sensors, magnetic field sensors, and temperature pressure sensors, which respectively take up the different physical signatures produced by debris impacts. The sensor outputs are then directed to the signal conditioning stage, where filtering and normalization are performed. After this, a threshold-based event detection logic combined with a weighted multi-sensor data fusion method is applied to enhance detection reliability and lower the number of incorrect triggers caused by normal satellite operations. The system deploys event-driven logic for independent and low-power surveillance. Impact occurrences are recorded, sent, or kept with time stamps. The combination of the sensors increases the dependability, separates the background noise from the impacts, and makes possible the logging, power management, and integration of the nanosatellite without interruption, supporting the safety of long-term missions.
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A Compact Multi-Sensor System for Real-Time Micro-Debris Impact Detection in Nanosatellites
Published:
13 April 2026
by MDPI
in The 1st International Online Conference on Aerospace
session Digitalization, Autonomy & Airspace Management
Abstract:
Keywords: Micro-debris impact detection; Nanosatellites; Multi-sensor data fusion; Real-time monitoring; Low-power space instrumentation
